Response to Claire's Piece

Great piece, Claire! This is something I’ve been dealing with my mom and I’m glad that your parents are seemingly dealing with it better than my mom. As to your actual piece, I think you did a great job illustrating the development of what could probably be called forming your intellectual autonomy? You’re always going to be influenced by your Roman Catholic upbringing but you’re not going to make decisions that won’t be directly influenced by those beliefs. Firstly, this piece is really timely in lieu of all soul searching done by Catholics these days because of the issues seen in the press and also you are able to illustrate the difference between an American Catholic and these European, often, “Catholics”. I find that fascinating because it is so often, we are seen as the ones who have the problems, especially by the Church. The way that you opened with your Victorian class and continued with your reading of Camus’ absurdist novella was also quite ingenious as you were able to then frame yourself within a continuum that has occurred periodically over centuries. This takes it beyond the purely personal and helps to show you as part of a larger group of people struggling with these issues. Again, great job.