25th in a series
Patty Fitzpatrick spent years wrestling with Catholicism, mustering the will to show up at church with her husband and two children, pushing back against teachings she didn’t agree with and attitudes about women that made Sunday Mass a weekly occasion for anger. Pope John Paul II’s pronouncement that women would never be ordained and that Catholics were forbidden to even think or speak about such an eventuality sent her over the edge.
She started meeting with a small group of other angry and distressed Catholic women in the Kansas City, Mo., area. Ultimately, she tired of complaining about the church, stopped going, and began attending St. Andrew Christian Church in nearby Olathe, Kan., a Disciples of Christ congregation. She’s never looked back.
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