Lived Experiences: Joan and Grace
Stories from Joan and Grace
Last week, we invited readers to share their stories of high control Catholicism — to help give language and lived experience to our ongoing conversations. This is the first collection of stories we received: a striking contrast between Joan, who grew up in a liberal rural parish rooted in community and justice, and Grace, whose family became deeply involved in a Traditional Latin Mass parish and whose brother ultimately joined a separatist monastery.
Joan’s Story
Joan grew up on a farm in rural Canada in the 1970s and 1980s, attending Church at one of the closest small town parishes depending on whichever one had the latest Mass so that her dad could finish chores before the family attended Mass. Both parishes were served by one priest, who often came to their home for pancakes after Mass. Growing up, it was Joan, her mom, dad, and her younger sister and brother, along with her maternal grandmother--a strong Catholic influence in her life.
Her mom took communion to the ill and volunteered as a catechism teacher at their local church because their town--small as it was--did not have any Catholic schools, so all the children gathered after school on Tuesdays to receive religious education. She was an altar server growing up, at a time the Bishop did not allow girls to serve, but the priest was happy to have her and others serve on the altar. She wrote, “I took some secret delight in thinking that our priest was subversive and a rule breaker for a just cause.”
She grew up in a parish with hippie folk music. Even more radical, because there was only one priest for two parishes, sometimes the priest had her mom and dad organize and lead a layperson service. He didn’t direct them or review what they had planned but trusted them completely. With that freedom, her mom asked a female parishioner to give the homily. This same priest also ministered to close family friends whose son is gay, blessing the son’s marriage long before Pope Francis allowed it and baptized the son and partner’s two adopted sons.
“That is the Catholicism I grew up with,” and said, “and I am so grateful to have experienced religion that was rooted in love, community, and doing what is right by each other, something that today I would believe we would call Social Justice.” But it differs radically from her current experiences, as she wrote;
“Today, my husband and I attend Mass most but not all Sundays in the small city we reside close to. None of our three adult children are practicing Catholics. Two are married to women we adore, but neither got married in the Church, although one is married to a lovely Christian girl whose parents were once upon a time Pentecostal ministers. Our daughter is in a relationship with a trans woman who we respect and also adore, and who is incredibly loving and kind to our daughter. All of our children love their grandparents and are in a relationship with them. Our daughter recently told her grandparents she had a girlfriend and Gramma and Grampa were great!
At Church, I volunteer with the Parish Council in an attempt to add some humanity and as a counterpoint to what seems to be a prevailing set of unfriendly, unwelcoming sentiments. I would describe those sentiments as High Control. Thank you Max Kuzma and Emma Cieslik for giving me that language. (I too am a bit subversive—I volunteered to be the Parish Council recording secretary which gives me some power to ensure that our meetings are recorded in a particular way, which one might describe as just a wee bit self-serving.) Some of the things I have experienced in our parish in the last few years:
Signage at the entrance to the nave reminding people to be silent,
When that has not worked to the satisfaction of all, instituting the Rosary before Mass “so that people will not talk before Mass,”
A move to recite the Divine Mercy Chaplet following the recessional “so that people will not talk after Mass,”
A suggestion to have anyone who arrives late for Mass be directed to the parish hall where they can watch the Mass streamed so as to not disturb those already partaking in the Liturgy,
Concern whether people are receiving the Holy Eucharist “correctly” (i.e., “are they in a state of grace?”) and with the appropriate reverence,
A parish council chair who has instructed the rest of the council that we are not to bring anything up at meetings unless we have “followed the proper chain of command” and had his prior approval to do so (I did rebut, “this is a Church, not a paramilitary entity”),
A parish council chair (male) who wished to sit in on and audit a women's ministry program—She Shall be Called Woman by Paradisus Dei--to ensure that it wasn’t discussing anything that is inappropriate (e.g., “women seeking roles like the diaconate in the Catholic Church, which have traditionally been male-centric”, pride parades, etc.)
Regular updates about what clothing is and isn’t appropriate for liturgical ministers to be donning (I have actually never seen anything egregiously disrespectful),
Et cetera.
As I reflect on my own process of writing this document to this point, I note that I was very happy in writing long form prose regarding my background. It was a joy to write and flowed quickly and easily. By contrast, the above makes me so joyless, I find it difficult to recount and thus wish to give it nothing more than a handful of bullet points. Who are the people promoting much of the above? It is not our deacons. It is not our senior citizens. It does seem to be coming mainly from: the occasional very conservative priest, a person I know to have had involvement with Opus Dei, but especially from younger persons who have converted to Catholicism through the Rite of Christian Initiation of Adults.
Sometimes I despair, and my husband and I question, why do we still participate in our Catholic parish? We wonder aloud, if my parents were not still alive and attending Mass with us, and enjoying breakfast together afterwards, would we still be attending? I am so sad to have come to this. I persevere, however, and will continue to wish and pray for hope.”
Grace’s Story
Grace grew up in the Midwest as a cradle Catholic. Her dad was raised Catholic, but her mom converted from Lutheranism when she was five. The eldest of three children, Grace went to Catholic school from preschool through high school before attending a Jesuit Catholic university. After her mom converted, she became deeply involved in the Church, working at a Traditional Latin Rite parish that was established out of the same building as their Novus Ordo parish.
Grace’s mom invited the whole family to attend TLM mass with her, but acknowledged they still had friends at the old parish, but when the Novus Ordo parish closed--part of a larger closing of churches in her area, just the TLM parish remained. People came from over an hour away to attend the TLM over the weekend. Grace’s family goes there for holidays, and along with her mom, Grace’s brother got deeply involved in the parish when he was in high school. He started attending midnight Mass as a sophomore and serving as an altar server--only boys could serve.
“He absolutely fell in love with it,” Grace said. “He started going there very regularly. He started serving there on the altar, which it’s very traditional--only boys can serve and they have to go through special training, but this led him to get more committed and involved in his faith.”
Her brother had wanted to be a priest when he was younger but that dream faded away as he grew up, but as he became more involved in the TLM parish, he stopped playing baseball to attend Mass. At the same time, she started to notice changes to his demeanor and behavior, including making derogatory comments about how her sister dressed.
“There were a lot of things said to me and to my younger sister that deeply disturbed me, and honestly a lot of these things got worse as he became involved at the church,” Grace told us. “He seemed to use his faith to justify the hurtful things that he would say, and justify calling my sister a very derogatory term just because of the way she dresses when you should never say that to anyone and she’s your sister and 16.”
Why didn’t he act like who she knew a Catholic to be, a Catholic who acted out of service?
“My relationship with Catholicism--I’ve been more connected through service, and I have a lot of service when I was younger. That’s how I always felt most connected through God,” Grace continued. “The God that I was seeing them believe in felt like a completely different God than who I knew.”
While altar serving, her brother met other older men who also served and eventually joined an isolated monastery. He applied and got permission to visit the site and ended up joining--it was devastating for Grace and her family because of the isolation. The hermits at the monastery have no electricity or running water. Their practice centers on attending the TLM, engaged in manual labor, and only spoke to one another for an hour on Sundays.
The men are renamed by the priest in charge and are only able to write one letter to family once a month. These letters going out to family and letters coming in from family are all read by a liaison who can flag content. It became an issue when Grace mentioned that her aunt who said he should have been renamed “Brother Handsome,” and the liaison flagged this because they thought it was from a former crush. They called Grace’s mom, who had to explain that it was his aunt who said this.
Despite sending letters to him from January through April--the entire time he was in the monastery, they didn’t hear back until August 2024, when Grace’s family learned his new name when he signed the letter saying that he didn’t want them to try to contact him anymore. For this reason, her family is not welcome to visit him at the monastery, which they would only be able to do four days out of the year, and given the highly policed nature of communication, Grace is sad that she will never be able to come out to her brother.
“It was hard to understand how this place where he was going to get closer to God was taking him away from his family,” Grace said, “especially when his family had always been the ones that pushed him to pursue his religious calling.”
All this was going on as Grace was hiding her sexuality, deeply fearful that her family would find out. Because of everything happening with her brother, Grace didn’t come out to her parents until this past January. Grace had hoped they would be expecting, especially since they had most likely lost one child to the Church, but was met by her mom telling her that her sole purpose was to procreate with a man. The situation exploded, and she moved out of her parent’s house to live with her partner.
It’s indicative of a wider problem, Grace shared with us, inside the TLM parish. “I feel like I’m stepping back in time,” Grace said. She noticed that the ways in which women are treated, from discussions of their traditional gender roles of daughter, wife, and mother, and how they dress feels like she is stepping back in time. Her mom and other members at the parish also don’t necessarily listen to Vatican doctrine, openly stating that Pope Francis was wrong and refusing to refer to him as pope. It coincides with far-right conservative political statements said on the pulpit and reinforced inside the Church.
“It just feels like brainwashing sometimes,” Grace said.
For Grace, it’s complicated--her mom’s involvement and dedication to the TLM parish has afforded her closeness to her son, learning about him through the parish’s connections to the monastery, but at the same time, it’s influenced the ways in which she engages with her family and wider society. As we shared in the essay, not only is her brother’s monastery insular but the TLM parish has become an echo-chamber where more radical views surrounding medical care and diverse identities have taken root in a community that not only denies a secular world but also leadership within their own Church.
Check out the “introduction to High Control Catholicism” series here. Then, read the case study “Out of Time: Catholic Separatism in St. Marys, Kansas.” Finally, check out “True Crime in the Catholic Church: Franciscan University, Opus Dei, and Extreme Fundamentalist Thinking.”
thank you so much for sharing my story! i deeply appreciate the work you both are doing!
very nice perspective from two catholics who grew up deeply immersed into catholicism and their individual high-control catholicism experiences. also, how it’s affected them today! changes for the better are rooted in discussion and i love to see that discussions like these are being held.