Catholic Guilt
Asking my best friend to be Godfather to my babies brought up a lot of old Catholic guilt. A gay dad reflects on faith, identity, and the weight of old stories.
Last night I was talking to my best friend, asking him to be the Godfather to my babies. The conversation was warm and easy and exactly what I needed. And then, somewhere in the middle of it, all the old Catholic guilt showed up uninvited.
Where It Comes From
I grew up Catholic. Not casually Catholic — actually Catholic. Mass, confession, the whole architecture of it. The guilt isn't metaphorical. It's structural. It's built into how I learned to think about right and wrong, about what I deserve and what I don't.
Being gay and Catholic is its own particular kind of complicated. You spend years navigating the gap between what you were taught and who you are. Most days I've made peace with it. Some days it comes back. It's the kind of identity tension I wrote about in what it's really like raising kids as a gay dad .
The Godfather Conversation
Asking someone to be Godfather is a Catholic act. It's a sacramental role. And there I was — a gay man, having children through surrogacy, asking my best friend to take on a role that comes from the same tradition that spent years telling me my family wasn't valid.
I sat with that for a while. The contradiction of it. The audacity, maybe. And then I thought: this is exactly what I want to pass on to my daughters. Not the guilt. The capacity to hold complexity. To love the tradition and reject the parts that were wrong.
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What I've Decided
I'm not going to resolve this cleanly. The guilt doesn't disappear because I've intellectually worked through it. It lives in the body. It shows up in moments like this one.
But I'm also not going to let it have the last word. My daughters will have a Godfather. They'll have a family that looks nothing like what the catechism described. And they'll be loved completely. That's the story I'm choosing to tell .
Frequently Asked Questions
Can a gay man be Catholic?
That's a question millions of people are navigating in their own way. Many LGBTQ+ Catholics maintain their faith while rejecting specific Church teachings. Others leave entirely. There's no single answer — only the one you work out for yourself.
How do you raise kids with religion when you have a complicated relationship with it?
Honestly, mostly. You share what you value, acknowledge what you've struggled with, and let them form their own relationship with it. You don't have to resolve your own complexity before you can give them something real.
Joseph Tito
Creator of The Dad Diaries. Gay dad of twins. Writing about fatherhood, surrogacy, and the beautiful mess of real life.
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Stories from a gay dad raising twins. No advice you didn't ask for, no sponsored content — just honest modern fatherhood.