Convent Cruelties

Convent Cruelties or My Life in the Convent
By Helen Baranowski Jackson
Self-published, Seventh edition, 1924, 114 pp. (first published in 1919)

American Protestant literature of the 19th and early-20th centuries included many “convent escape narratives,” first-hand testimonies by former-Catholic nuns describing the terrible abuses they witnessed and suffered within convents, and their eventual escape. Protestant readers were appalled that such cruelties and abrogations of citizens’ freedoms were taking place in Catholic convents across the United States, while Catholic spokespersons dismissed these testimonies as pure fiction. There was nothing more cultish than Roman Catholic convents, but Protestants gradually became inured to the institution.

In this book, Helen Baranowski Jackson describes how she desired to become a nun at the age of thirteen. She entered a convent run by the Felician Sisters (Polish) in Detroit, Michigan as a young postulant, but quickly became disenchanted with religious life due to the harsh restrictions and penalties imposed by the Mother Superior and the other nuns. All connections with family were severed. Because of alleged insubordination, Helen was transferred to another nunnery in Detroit, a convent run by the Sisters of the Good Shepherd (the Magdalenes) where the harsh restrictions and abuses continued. Helen was eventually able to escape the convent and subsequently became a speaker on the Protestant lecture circuit, describing her travails.

Above: A vintage photograph of the former Good Shepherd Convent and Asylum/Reformatory complex on Fort Street West in Detroit where Helen Baranowski was a postulant.

Helen describes being locked in a tiny room for days, being deprived of food, forced to take ice baths, and being whipped. The abuses described by Helen Jackson shocked Protestant readers in 1919 and were met with derision by Catholics. The full weight of Catholic political influence was brought to bear upon Ms. Jackson and her testimony. However, investigations of the infamous “Magdalene asylums,” beginning in the 1990s, confirmed the severe, torturous, and sometimes deadly discipline of the Catholic nuns.

Young Catholic women were attracted to convent life as an attempt to merit their salvation. After being confronted with the strict rigors/disciplines of religious life, many desired to leave the convent, but were “dissuaded,” sometimes forcibly. Very few Catholic women desire to be nuns these days, but all Catholics are still blinded by Rome’s false gospel of salvation by sacramental grace and merit.

Above: The last standing portion of the sprawling Sisters of the Good Shepherd Convent and Asylum/Reformatory complex in Detroit before it was demolished in 2014. If the walls could speak they would testify of the rampant abuse and suffering within.

Throwback Thursday: Behind convent doors

Welcome to this week’s “Throwback Thursday” installment. Today, we’re going to revisit a post that was originally published back on June 22nd, 2016 and has been revised.

My Life in the Convent
By Margaret Lisle Shepherd
Book and Bible House, 1946, 258 pages

Protestant books examining alleged abuse in Roman Catholic convents proliferated in the 19th and early 20th centuries. Many of these books were written by ex-nuns. Catholic spokespersons naturally categorized these books as “Puritan pornography” meant to appeal to prurient interests and accused the authors of fraud.

Margaret Lisle Shepherd

An example of the genre is “My Life in the Convent” written by Margaret Lisle Shepherd (aka Sister Magdalene Adelaide), first published in 1892. As an English girl living in India, Shepherd learns from her dying mother that her deceased father was a Catholic priest. The apple doesn’t fall far from the tree, so years later, after she has returned to England, Shepherd herself succumbs to the advances of a determined priest. Father Egan abandons his vocation and the two enter into a common-law marriage, which produces a baby girl. Egan eventually regrets his decision and abandons his family to resume his religious calling. With no means of support, Shepherd turns to thievery. She is apprehended, but it’s too late for the baby who dies from the effects of malnutrition. After a few detours, Shepherd ends up at the penitential Convent of St. Arno’s Court in Bristol, England. It’s already a difficult existence for the contrite nuns, but Shepherd describes how priests “ministering” at the convent occasionally take advantage of their charges. After two years at the convent, Shepherd discovers a Protestant Bible and is shocked to discover the many differences between Scripture and Catholicism and decides to leave. She is given sanctuary by Salvation Army ministers and accepts Jesus Christ as her Savior. She journeys to Canada and the United States, giving her testimony on the Protestant lecture circuit and assisting Christian charitable organizations.

The book’s epilogue circumspectly alludes to the Loyal Women of American Liberty, which Shepherd founded in Boston in 1888. The LWAL was a semi-secret patriotic society which promoted nativism and Protestantism. An internet search of Shepherd and the LWAL revealed Chicago newspaper articles of the period alleging Shepherd’s “deceit and immorality” regarding her account of her previous years, leading to her resignation from the organization in 1891. She wrote this book as an answer to her growing number of Catholic and Catholic-friendly critics. Shepherd continued on the lecture circuit, but faced mounting opposition from Catholic groups. She was arrested in Columbus, Ohio in 1902 on charges of selling “lewd and obscene” books, disorderly conduct, and inciting to riot. All charges were dropped when she agreed to leave the city. Shepherd subsequently traveled to Australia where she continued her lectures on Romanism, but soon found herself sick with cancer. Returning to the U.S., she died alone and penniless in a Detroit hospital in 1903 at the age of 43.

Reprints of “My Life in the Convent” were made available for many years. My 1946 edition was published by Book and Bible House owned by L. J. King, a passionate Protestant nativist. This book may have been slightly scandalous, “adults only,” reading in 1892, but it’s certainly tamer than what we read in newspapers today about pedophile priests.

With the number of Catholic nuns rapidly declining since the 1960s, convents are becoming increasingly few and far between. But were some nuns scandalously abused and mistreated over the centuries as this book and many others claimed? There’s no doubt. The church’s mandatory celibacy discipline for its priests and nuns couldn’t erase their sexuality. Refer to the excellent “The Nuns of Sant’Ambrogio: The True Story of a Convent in Scandal” by prize-winning, German historian, Hubert Wolf. Wolf used documentation from the vaults of the Vatican’s very own Office of the Holy Inquisition (the name was changed to the much more PR-friendly “Supreme Sacred Congregation of the Holy Office”) for his research. See here for my review. For other verifiable examples of clerical turpitude one need only recall the headlines over the last thirty years dealing with predatory pedophile priests and the subsequent cover-up by the church hierarchy.

At my Catholic grammar school, I was taught by members of the Sisters of Mercy who lived in a convent adjacent to the school. I was very curious about those women who wore stiff, uncomfortable medieval habits and lived together in a strict community with hardly any connection to family. They wore wedding rings as a sign that they were virginal brides of Christ. People point to peculiarities of extreme religious sects, but is there anything more cultish than a convent full of nuns? These women were attempting to merit their salvation through great personal sacrifice and pious religious devotion. But in nine years of schooling, the sisters never once mentioned to us the Gospel of salvation by God’s grace alone, through faith alone, in Jesus Christ alone as taught in God’s Word. Instead, they taught us the Catholic formula of salvation through the sacraments administered by the priests followed by obedience to the Ten Commandments (impossible!) and church rules. It was all about ritual, formalism, and religious legalism.

The nuns were not happy women. We students saw a side of them that our parents and adult parishioners were not privy to. There is no peace in religious striving. No one can possibly obey the Ten Commandments. The Law only condemns us as the sinners we are. Accept Jesus Christ as your Savior by faith alone. He paid the penalty for your sins and He’s waiting for you to receive Him as Savior.

“Behold, I stand at the door and knock. If anyone hears my voice and opens the door, I will come in to him and eat with him, and he with me.” – Revelation 3:20

Note from 2021: Emboldened by the #MeToo Movement, many nuns have come forward to report being abused by priests. Watch a 10-minute PBS video on the topic here.

The radicalization and steep decline of nuns

Sisters in Crisis: The Tragic Unraveling of Women’s Religious Communities
By Ann Carey
Our Sunday Visitor, 1997, 368 pp.

In 1965, there were 180,000 nuns in the U.S. Fifty years later, in 2014, there were only 50,000 and most of them were elderly. What caused the steep decline?

In this book, the author attempts to explain the reasons why the bottom dropped out of Catholic women’s religious orders. The RCC was already contemplating modernizing tradition-bound religious orders prior to the Second Vatican Council (1962-1965). The unofficial aggiornamento “fresh air” theme of the council emboldened nuns in leadership positions, who were simultaneously being drawn into the burgeoning feminist movement, to make drastic changes to their orders. They increasingly viewed the church as a patriarchal institution that devalued women. The church hierarchy watched in dismay as nuns jettisoned habits (uniforms) and convents and became increasingly involved in social gospel causes and New Age philosophies. Pope John Paul II repeatedly attempted to rein in the rebellious nuns, but the horse was already out of the barn.

Author Ann Carey, a conservative Catholic, laments in excruciatingly painstaking detail how American nuns became increasingly radicalized and distanced themselves from the control of the church hierarchy. Readers will need a program to keep track of all of the sundry councils and committees that were involved in the transformation. The traditions and structure that had once attracted fresh recruits to the orders were gone and membership plummeted.

Back in the 1960s in my northeast corner of Rochester, there were three Catholic parishes within a two-mile radius, each with its own grammar school and convent of teaching nuns. Is there anything more cultish than a convent full of virginal women claiming to be brides of Christ, replete with wedding rings? American Protestants had gradually become inured to the bizarre cultishness of convents.

My parish school, St. James, had a mixture of nun and lay teachers. My nun teachers were Sister Imelda (kindergarten), Sister Annunciata (1st grade), Sister Tarcisius (3rd Grade), and Sister MaryAnn Kosakoski (8th Grade – photo below). Other nuns at the school who I can remember were Sister Lourdes, Sister Gemma, Sister Goretti, Sister Virginia, and the principal, Sister Edwardine. Who were these mysterious women in their 14th century garb with their faces tightly squeezed by a multi-layered, cloth tourniquet? How did they live together in that convent building next to the school after classes were over?

In my nine years at St. James (1961-1970), under the tutelage of the Sisters of Mercy, I NEVER ONCE heard the genuine Gospel of salvation by God’s grace alone, through faith alone, in Jesus Christ alone. Instead, I was indoctrinated into Roman Catholicism with its false gospel of salvation by sacramental grace and merit and its intricate rituals and cultish practices. Those poor nuns were deluded slaves of a pseudo-Christian counterfeit.

This book was both painfully boring and interesting, if that’s possible. I did appreciate learning the history of how the radicalized nun leadership steered their orders into steep decline.

Above: An enclosed passageway allowed the teaching nuns of the former-St. James Elementary School (left) to comfortably enter and exit their convent house (right) in all types of inclement weather.

The woman above exemplifies today’s radicalized nuns

2018 photo

Throwback Thursday: Mother Angelica, conservative Catholic icon, dies at 92

Welcome to this week’s “Throwback Thursday” installment. Today, we’re going to revisit a post that was originally published back on March 28, 2016 and has been revised.

Catholic apologists love to point to the wide diversity within Protestantism with its large number of denominations and a growing number of non-denominational churches. But while evangelical Christians might disagree on many secondary and tertiary doctrinal issues, we are united in our belief in the Gospel of salvation by God’s grace alone, through faith alone, in Jesus Christ alone. Regrettably, many of the old, mainline Protestant denominations slipped into apostasy long ago.

Catholicism likes to present itself as the “one true church,” united in faith behind the pope, but the reality is actually quite different. Catholic belief ranges the full spectrum, from the super-progressive to the ultra-conservative, with hundreds of millions of nominal members in-between. The vast majority of Catholics (76%) do not attend mandatory weekly mass or yearly confession.

Speaking of Catholic conservatives, I see that Mother Mary Angelica, aka Rita Rizzo (photo above) passed away yesterday (March 27, 2016), Easter Sunday, at the age of 92. She was the driving force in the creation of the EWTN (Eternal Word Television Network) Catholic media conglomerate. Her pithy, no-nonsense commentary attracted a devoted following among conservative and traditionalist Catholics. There is little doubt that her admirers will soon be petitioning the church hierarchy to begin the canonization process to elevate Mother Angelica to sainthood.

Many uninformed evangelical Christians might take a quick look at the life of Mother Angelica and conclude, “Of course this woman was a devoted Christian. Despite her quirky and unbiblical Catholic distinctives, she obviously loved the Lord and devoted her entire life to Him.”

Regrettably, the “gospel” taught by Mother Angelica was NOT the genuine Good News! Gospel of salvation by God’s grace alone, through faith alone, in Jesus Christ alone. She believed, like all Catholics who are faithful to their church’s teachings, that salvation is by baptism and by participating in the church’s other sacraments and by obeying the Ten Commandments (impossible!) and church rules. She had an especially strong “devotion” to Mary and believed that Mary’s intercession was vital to salvation. Most people will remember her for leading the praying of the rosary to Mary, still re-broadcast daily on EWTN. However, Mother Angelica also supported her church’s dichotomous teaching that people of all religious “faiths” could be saved if they “followed the light they were given” and “lived good, upright lives.”

Through her media empire, Mother Angelica led many away from the genuine Gospel to a false gospel of salvation by sacramental grace and merit. Catholics are being misled from following the narrow way of Jesus Christ as the only hope of salvation and have, instead, been taught a wide-is-the-way religion which mentions God, Jesus, “faith,” and “grace,” but is actually one of the false, works-righteousness religions going back to Cain.

2020 Postscript: The EWTN conglomerate has emerged as one of the leaders of conservative Catholic opposition to pope Francis and his progressive reforms. Francis will definitely NOT be amenable to efforts to canonize Mother Angelica.

Throwback Thursday: Yup, convents were cultish, but where’s Jesus in all of this?

Welcome to this week’s “Throwback Thursday” installment. Today, we’re going to revisit a post that was originally published back on October 26th, 2015 and has been revised.

Forgotten Women in Convents
By Helen Conroy
Christ’s Mission, 1960, 121 pp.

Protestant books examining abuses in Roman Catholic convents proliferated throughout the 19th and early 20th centuries. “Forgotten Women in Convents” by ex-nun, Helen Conroy aka Sister Mary Ethel, was originally published in 1946 and was one of the last books of this once-popular genre. The 1960 edition that I purchased was published by Christ’s Mission, a Protestant evangelization outreach ministry to Roman Catholics, as part of a tidal wave of anti-Catholic literature that swept the nation leading up to the Kennedy-Nixon presidential election.

On the plus side, Conroy offers many valuable insights into how the Catholic church lured girls and young women into its nunneries and how it discouraged them from ever leaving. Evangelicals’ antennae go up if you mention the Mormons or Jehovah’s Witnesses, but is there anything more cultish than a Catholic convent? As Conroy points out, Catholicism adopted the notion of a cloistered community of virginal women, completely dedicated to (g)od/s, from pagan religions for its own purposes. These poor, deluded women were attempting to merit their salvation via the strict codes of their religious orders, through self-denial and even physically harmful self-mortification practices. Of course, extremely few Catholic women are joining convents these days and many of those who do will enjoy freedoms unimaginable to the nuns of Conroy’s era.

On the minus side – and this is a HUGE minus – Conroy never once alludes to the Gospel of Jesus Christ. Does she just assume her Protestant readers have accepted Jesus Christ as their Savior? In her exodus from Rome, did Conroy ever accept Christ? There’s no testimony therein of that being the case in this book. Instead, there’s quite a bit of criticism of Catholicism’s treatment of its nuns as being antithetical to American freedoms, but there is no mention of how Catholic works-righteousness legalism and ritualism is opposed to the Gospel of salvation by God’s grace alone, through faith alone, in Jesus Christ alone. In its surprisingly Christ-less approach, “Forgotten Women in Convents” reminds me quite a bit of a very popular anti-Catholic bestseller from the same period, “American Freedom and Catholic Power” (1949) by atheist Paul Blanshard.

See my earlier post for a booklist of “convent escape narratives.”

Throwback Thursday: 20 Former Nuns Who Left Roman Catholicism and Accepted Jesus Christ

Welcome to this week’s “Throwback Thursday” installment. This week, we’re going to revisit a post that was originally published back on October 28th, 2015 and has been revised.

The Truth Set Us Free: Twenty Former Nuns Tell Their Stories of God’s Amazing Grace
By Richard Bennett
Solid Ground Christian Books, 2010, 237 pp.

In this valuable book, Richard Bennett,* ex-Catholic priest and director of the Berean Beacon ministry, presents the testimonies of twenty former-nuns who left behind the false gospel legalism and ritualism of Roman Catholicism and accepted Jesus Christ as their Savior by faith alone. The personal accounts average only about eleven pages each so there’s not a lot of detail about Catholic theology, but each testimony is a blessing.

When Christians refer to “cults” they usually have Mormons and Jehovah’s Witnesses in mind, but can there be a practice more “cultish” than a convent full of virginal women who believe they are married to Jesus Christ, replete with wedding rings? The inspiration for the Catholic convent was the convent of the vestal virgins of pagan Rome.

All of the twenty ex-nuns in this book joined their religious “orders” with high expectations, believing they were pleasing God by earning their salvation through self-denial and ritualism, but they found no joy or contentment in the convent. All were introduced to the Word of God and were saved by the grace of God through faith in Jesus Christ alone. These women gave up the only life they knew to follow Christ, but what Christian can look back with regret at the corrupt things of this world when the glory of our Savior is before us?

“But whatever were gains to me I now consider loss for the sake of Christ. What is more, I consider everything a loss because of the surpassing worth of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord, for whose sake I have lost all things. I consider them garbage, that I may gain Christ and be found in him, not having a righteousness of my own that comes from the law, but that which is through faith in Christ—the righteousness that comes from God on the basis of faith.” – Philippians 3:7-9

I attended a Catholic grammar school for eight years back in the 1960s and was taught by nuns belonging to the order of the Sisters of Mercy. Our parents assumed the nuns were shining examples of love and contentment, but we students witnessed those women as they really were; troubled souls who sometimes vented their frustration, anger, and cruelty on their charges. Sisters Imelda, Annunciata, Tarcisius, Gemma, Mary Ann, and Virgina, whatever became of you??? By God’s grace, were you somehow able to see through through the religious legalism and ritualism you taught to us and find the Savior?

Convents are few and far between these days. The great majority of Catholics can’t even bother to attend obligatory mass on Sunday let alone take up a religious vocation. In 1965, there were 180,000 nuns in the United States, but by 2006 the number had declined dramatically to only 67,000. By 2014, the number had further dropped to 50,000.

These twenty ex-nuns with their testimonies are bold, uncompromising witnesses to lost Roman Catholics and to accommodating and compromising evangelicals who embrace the RCC with its false gospel as a Christian entity.

Copies of “The Truth Set Us Free” are available from Solid Ground Christian Books here.

*The Lord’s faithful servant, ex-priest, Richard Bennett, went home to the Lord on September 23rd, 2019.

Throwback Thursday: Sister Rita of Cascia – “She returned the maggots to the fetid sore.”

For our first Throwback Thursday installment, we’re going to take a look back at this post that was originally published July 19, 2015, with a few minor revisions.

Many canonized Catholic saints of the past are admired and venerated for their “asceticism” (definition: a lifestyle characterized by abstinence from sensual pleasures, often for the purpose of pursuing spiritual goals). However, some of those saints took their asceticism to an extreme level including self-harm. Bible Christians would rightly judge such practices as anti-Biblical and the practitioners as mentally disturbed and/or demonically influenced. Let’s examine one such “saint,” a nun, Margherita Lotti aka saint Rita of Cascia (1381-1451) using information from a Catholic source:

“On one occasion, a Franciscan friar named Blessed James of Mount Brandone, came to the church of St. Mary to preach on the Passion and Death of Jesus Christ, focusing mostly on the Crown of Thorns. Rita wept as though her heart was broken. After the sermon was over, she went to her cell and prostrated herself before the Crucifix, meditating on the pains Christ suffered from the thorns. She asked Jesus to give her at least one of the 72 thorns which pierced His poor head, causing Him so much pain and suffering, that she might feel a part of that pain. Upon completion of that prayer, Rita’s Divine Spouse granted her wish, making of His Crown of Thorns, so to speak, a bow, and one of the thorns, an arrow. Jesus fired it at the forehead of St. Rita with such force, that it penetrated the flesh and bone, and remained fixed in the middle of her forehead, leaving a wound that lasted all her life, and even to this day, the scar of the wound remains plainly visible.

The pain was so intense that Rita fell into a swoon. She would have died right there had Jesus not preserved her life. The pain caused by the wound increased daily. It became so ugly, foul smelling and revolting, that Rita became an object of nausea to many who saw it. As a result, Rita asked permission to spend most of her time alone in her cell, but she was happy. Little worms fed themselves on the open wound, thus giving her new occasion to practice patience.

The year 1450 was proclaimed by Pope Nicholas V as a Jubilee Year, thus providing many indulgences for those who would go on pilgrimage to Rome. Several of the sisters were given permission to go. At the feet of her superior, St. Rita also asked permission to go. Fearful that those who might observe the ugly and foul smelling wound might be scandalized, the superioress denied her permission to go unless the wound would disappear.

Rushing to the feet of her Divine Spouse, Rita humbly sought God’s will, asking Him to take away the wound, but to continue to allow her to suffer the pain from the wound. The wound disappeared at once. Rita gave thanks and rushed to her superioress, who was surprised and astonished – and Rita was granted permission to accompany the other nuns to Rome.

The sisters visited the stational churches and the tombs of the martyrs. Many were touched by Rita’s devotion and piety. As they returned to the convent – just as Rita stepped over the threshold, the ugly wound reappeared on her forehead, and she suffered intense pains. The offensive odor and the worms reappeared also. When one of the worms fell to the floor, Rita picked it up with care, and placed it back in the wound. She called them “her little angels,” as they were instruments for testing her patience as they recalled to her the intense suffering of her Jesus. She once again retired to her cell so as not to inconvenience the other nuns.”

http://www.sacramentals.org/saintritaofcascia.htm

As with this story of saint Rita, many of the accounts of the nun mystics include thinly-veiled erotic inferences. Academics refer to this as “bridal mysticism.” In addition to other elements, the visionary is often pierced by some type of instrument or light. The phallic symbolism is fairly obvious. If this information upsets you, I can certainly understand why, but let’s not shy away from the facts.

Today, Margherita Lotti aka Sister Rita of Cascia would be properly diagnosed as mentally ill, but the Roman Catholic church venerates this 15th-century nun as a “saint.”

Roman Catholicism betrayed its demonic elements by exalting extreme asceticism including various forms of harmful self-mortification as well as subjective, anti-Biblical religious experientialism/hysteria aka mysticism. Praise God for the Good News! of salvation by God’s grace through faith in Jesus Christ alone!

“28 Come to me, all who labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest. 29 Take my yoke upon you, and learn from me, for I am gentle and lowly in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. 30 For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light.” – Matthew 11:28-30

Convent horrors: From the frying pan into the fire

While searching our county library’s database for items listed under “Roman Catholicism,” I stumbled across this very interesting French film:

The Nun (La religieuse)

• Directed by Guillaume Nicloux
• Based on Denis Diderot’s popular 18th-century novel, “The Nun (La religieuse),” and adapted to the screen by Guillaume Nicloux and Jérôme Beaujour
• Featuring Pauline Etienne as Suzanne Simonin, Isabelle Huppert as Supérieure Saint-Eutrope, and Louise Bourgoin as Supérieure Christine
• Distributed by Le Pacte (France), 2013, Running Time: 100 minutes

Plot

In mid-17th-century France, a 17-year-old girl, Suzanne, is placed in a convent by her parents for supposedly only a limited period of time. Suzanne subsequently learns from the friendly mother superior (Francois Lebrun) that her parents intend for her to remain in the convent and become a nun. The girl rebels against the rigidity of convent life, refusing to take her “final vows” at the last second, and is sent back to her parents.

Suzanne’s mother reveals to the girl that she is her illegitimate child and that she will not be sharing in the family’s dwindling estate. Suzanne is sent back to the convent, much to her displeasure, but sadness turns to terror when the friendly mother superior dies and is replaced by the harsh Supérieure Christine, who is determined to crush the girl’s rebellious spirit. Suzanne manages to smuggle out a plea for help to sympathetic parties, and Supérieure Christine retaliates by relentlessly punishing the girl to the brink of death.

Suzanne’s outside benefactors are able to arrange her transfer to a different convent, which initially appears to be much less harsh. However, it’s soon revealed that the nun in charge, Supérieure Saint-Eutrope, is a lesbian who preys upon her younger charges. Saint-Eutrope makes several advances upon Suzanne, but the girl is able to rebuff her. Suzanne reveals the sordid goings on within the convent to a visiting priest confessor, who then works in league with her benefactors to stage her escape.

After traveling all night, Suzanne awakes inside a sprawling estate. She learns her wealthy benefactor, who had saved her from the horrors of the convent, was her biological father, who had died during the night. She can look forward to a secure future on the estate with her half-brother.

Commentary

It’s disturbing to follow Suzanne’s horrific experiences within the two convent hell-holes. However, this fictional story is an excellent portrayal of the real abuse that routinely took place within Catholic convents, rectories, seminaries, and the palaces of prelates century after century. Suzanne’s character represents the millions of women and men, girls and boys who were physically, emotionally, and/or sexually abused over the course of a millennia by the “celibate” Catholic clergy. Sadder still are all of the Roman Catholic souls who have been misled by their church’s false gospel of salvation by sacramental grace and merit.

Actress Pauline Etienne does an excellent job in her portrayal of a young woman caught in her religion’s legalism, ritualism, and extreme asceticism, which all veiled the unspeakable corruption at its core.

Supérieure Christine devises another “discipline” for the rebellious Suzanne.

Catholic archbishop accuses pope Francis of covering up abuse, demands he resign.

I normally collect news stories over the course of the week and post them as part of the Weekend Roundup, but every once and awhile a story is so important, like this one, that it cannot wait.

Following closely on the heels of the news of U.S. cardinal, Theodore McCarrick, being stripped of his office due to allegations of sexual abuse, and then the pedophile priest and cover-up tsunami in Pennsylvania, we have another disturbing but unsurprising revelation. According to the story below, which is breaking across all major news outlets, archbishop, Carlo Maria Viganò (above photo, left), the former Vatican nuncio (ambassador) to the United States, claims to have informed pope Francis in 2013 that cardinal McCarrick had sexually abused children, seminarians, and priests, but that Francis did absolutely nothing. Viganò is calling for Francis to resign.

The Catholic hierarchy is corrupt from top to bottom.

I’ll be posting follow-ups to the story in the Weekend Roundup if not sooner.

Pope Francis Long Knew of Cardinal’s Abuse and Must Resign, Archbishop Says

A priest and nun trust in Christ by faith alone and come out of Catholicism

From Darkness to Light
By Frank and Joan Testa
Xulon Press, 2012, 173 pages

This book is the testimony of Frank and Joan Testa, a former Roman Catholic priest and nun.

Frank grew up in Newark, New Jersey as part of a Catholic family and states that he “came to know the Lord Jesus as (his) personal Savior” in his early teen years, but that he remained in Catholicism out of ignorance. He determined to become a priest and attended seminary in the U.S. and Europe and was ordained in 1964. He quickly became involved with Catholic social agencies and was drawn to urban activism in several New Jersey cities, often earning the disapproval of his more traditionally-minded superiors. But by reading the Bible and through contact with Christians in the communities he was serving, Frank came to understand that many of the doctrines and practices of Roman Catholicism are opposed to Scripture. He resigned from the priesthood and left Catholicism in 1977.

Joan grew up with her Catholic family in Newburgh, New York (sixty miles north of NYC) and entered a convent of the Dominican order in 1955, immediately following her high school graduation. She earned college degrees and subsequently taught in Catholic schools in the States and Puerto Rico. She was drawn to studying God’s word and also became involved in community activism in New Jersey, where she became acquainted with Frank on a strictly professional basis. Through the study of God’s Word and the witness of Christian friends, Joan accepted Jesus Christ as her Savior by faith alone in 1978 and left her religious order and the Catholic church.

Although they were both out of Catholicism, Frank and Joan were still involved in urban activism and their paths crossed regularly. A special friendship developed and the two were married in 1980. Together, the couple founded an urban mission church, ministered to addicts through the Teen Challenge program, and became involved in foreign missions. In 1999, they began their “Repent America” ministry, which involved guest-speaking at churches and street preaching all across the U.S.

While I enjoyed this book, I do have a few qualifications. Firstly, Frank says he entered into a “personal relationship” with Jesus Christ as a young teen while reading the book, “God Goes to Murderer’s Row” by “father” M. Raymond, a Trappist monk. I am curious how a person could trust in Jesus Christ by faith alone, and then go through eight years of Catholic seminary and thirteen years as a priest without ever comprehending that Catholicism’s legalistic calculus and ritualism have no connection with the genuine Gospel of salvation by God’s grace through faith in Jesus Christ alone. Perhaps Frank had had a preliminary insight into salvation in Christ as I had as a child in 1967 (see here), although I would not actually accept Jesus as Savior until 1983. Despite the confusion, it appears from his writing that Frank eventually acquired a full understanding of the Gospel and genuinely accepted Christ as his Savior by faith alone.

Secondly, both Frank and Joan are outspoken Pentecostals. I’m a cessationist in regards to the apostolic gifts of the Spirit, so there are several passages in the book that I read with a good amount of skepticism. I generally avoid discussing the apostolic gifts in a general forum such as this because there’s nothing to be gained by debating this topic involving secondary beliefs with my Pentecostal and charismatic brethren, but I do need to point out that in this book, Frank refers to believers who are cessationists in a negative manner.

Despite the above qualifications, I enjoyed this book overall.