Growing up Catholic in the Twentieth Century: A 1940S - 1950S Memoir

Parochial school in the 1940s and ’50s. Strict discipline and rigid rules. Everything was verboten—from eating meat on Friday to patent leather shoes. The catechism told us we were sinners; Bible stories told us we would be punished. Teen-agers would struggle with “sinful” emotions and humiliating confessions. Finding ways to circumvent the rules—without the guilt and fear—became this teen-ager’s obsession. It was mid-century America, when one didn’t question authority; when millions proudl...