by JULIANNA BAGGOTT
April 5, 2010
... My mother's mother had been raised in a house of prostitution and, seeking a different life for her daughter, sent my mother to Catholic school. My mother's father had been an alcoholic. When he became violently drunk, my grandmother would take my mother to the convent. The nuns took them in, time and again ...
When I left in 2003, I was attending the church she'd chosen, where I’d been confirmed and married, where my children had been baptized. Granted, it wasn't a typical Catholic church. Made of cinder blocks and housed on a college campus, it had a hippie vibe. The Stations of the Cross were depicted in abstract art. I'd seen the liturgy performed by interpretive dancers and mimes. Our priest was brilliant, kind and funny. His homilies, both intellectually challenging and emotive, helped us see the divine. We cried openly in the pews, even my father. There was never talk about how we should vote, nothing about abortion or homosexuality. Contrary to church rules, our priest invited everyone to Communion, regardless of the supposed state of their souls.
At home, we did talk politics — the greatness of social activist and journalist Dorothy Day; the Berrigan brothers, peace activists burning draft cards; and an adoration of President Kennedy and Mother Teresa.
I went to a middle school run by nuns who worked their own fields on tractors in full habit, their veils billowing. Then I went on to a large Catholic high school and a Catholic college where I was taught Liberation theology, that Jesus was a radical figure, and that to be Christ-like you had to tend to the poor. It was an old-fashioned, anti-papal, anti-Rome Catholic education. Perhaps the church raised me to be an anti-church Catholic. That is, in fact, what I became ...
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=125583443
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