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RENE REID

Director of Catholic Church Reform International
Reno, Nevada, USA

Church rules caused so much bickering in my family

My story began in 1962 when I entered religious life and discovered that my decision hurt my mother deeply. Struggling to understand her resistance, I remembered my mother telling me she was married by a justice of the peace at age 17. Not accepting this, her mother and the pastor instructed her to have their marriage sanctioned in the Church. Obediently, she did so but three years later, World War II ended, and once they were living together, my parents divorced when I had just turned three years old. 

Recognizing that Mom was so young, the pastor promised to secure an annulment for her, but years went by without this happening. It appeared to take money for an annulment, of which we had very little with Mom raising me as a single parent. My mother felt that the Church had ruined her life and now was taking her only child away from her never again to come home or eat a meal together (the custom of religious life back in those days). Angry with the Church (and hurt by me), my mother stopped speaking to me for the moment and felt free to go on with her life. 

At the age of 38, with no annulment having come through, she met a man, fell in love, and married him. Now her mother . . . more Catholic than the Pope . . . stopped speaking to her because she was defying the rules of the Church.

 I realize now that my passion for Church reform came primarily due to the Church causing so much divisiveness in my family.

Religious life: A nun’s journey by Rene Reid

Facebook: Rene Reid

Catholic Church Reform International