There’s No End to the Cost of Abuse to the Catholic Church
One woman’s crisis of faith shows why dioceses across the U.S. are struggling.
It’s getting harder to fill those pews.
Photographer: Jeff Swensen/Getty Images
My mother, Rosalie, grew up Irish Catholic in Providence, Rhode Island — with the emphasis on Catholic. She went to parochial grade school and Catholic high school. She never missed Sunday Mass. She said the rosary, memorized her catechism and prayed every night before bed. She was very devout.
Her own mother believed that if her children entered a religious order, God’s grace would shine down on her family. So after high school my mother dutifully entered the convent. It didn’t take her long to realize that she was ill-suited to being a nun, and that there were other ways to serve God. (When her parents drove her home from the convent, her mother told her to put her head down so the neighbors wouldn’t see her.)