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For current and former religious professionals without supernatural beliefs.
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    Mary Joyce

    I was a “cradle” Catholic.  My mother was divorced and not allowed to go to Mass, but she sent all seven of her children to Mass on Sunday and to Catholic schools.  I never understood that but I think going to Mass was the trade off for being allowed to attend Catholic schools which my mother thought were superior to the public schools. Sometime around 3rd grade I was apparently telling relatives that I was going to be a nun.This is what I did the summer I graduated from my Catholic, all-girls high school.

    I wish I could sit down with my 18-year-old self.  There would be so many things that I would bring to her attention.  We were poor, living on government commodities in a housing project and with absolutely no one to help me realize a college education. Going to college had to be in the back of my mind when I entered a Franciscan teaching order.  I had tried the Daughters of Charity, Notre Dame Sisters, and others, but I was told that none of them would take the child of a divorced woman.  This was surely another red flag. (My younger sister tells me that one day when she was in 5th grade she noticed in her teacher’s grade book that next to her name the nun had written, “Mother – Adulteress”.)  In spite of this, I thought God was calling me to this way of life.