“The immediate cause was my mother’s death,” Luke explained, “but the long-term cause was a very difficult childhood dominated by a godless father. In sharp contrast with my father, who was an abuser of alcohol and a wife beater, my mother was a very religious person who sincerely believed that she was at fault for my father’s behavior and not he. She believed, like Eve, that she had turned away from God by marrying my father and was a sinner to the point that she had convinced me that I was a child born in sin. She was so convinced that she told me that if I expected to salvage my eternal soul, I had to pray to the Virgin and consecrate my life to her, Christ, and the Church.”

“My goodness,” Sana voiced, feeling strong compassion about Luke’s story. Although hardly the same, she had always felt she’d suffered from her father’s premature death when she was only eight, even to the point of now wondering if one of the reasons she’d married Shawn was because when she first met him he was, to a large degree, a father figure that she’d missed. “Did focusing on the Church help?” she asked.

Luke gave a short, contemptuous laugh. “Hardly,” he said. “One of the priests clearly perceived me as a troubled child and, being troubled himself, proceeded to take advantage of me for over a year.”

“Oh, good Lord, no!” Sana said, feeling even more compassion for Luke. She was so taken aback that she had to actively suppress a strong urge to envelope him in her arms for fear of what his reaction might be. He might misinterpret her gesture as being more than empathy. He was, after all, not a child but a man. Besides, there was something rote about Luke’s delivery.

“At first I thought it was relatively normal behavior,” Luke said wistfully, “as I thought I loved the individual. But as I grew older I came to recognize it was wrong. Not knowing what to do, since the priest was one of the more popular in the parish, I worked up the courage to tell my mother.”

“Was she sympathetic?” Sana asked, with concern about where the story was headed, considering what Luke had already said about his mother.

“Absolutely the opposite. Just like with her mixed-up belief she was at fault in regard to my father’s abuse, she was totally insistent that I had seduced the priest rather than vice versa, especially when she had asked me why it had lasted for so long and I had admitted that I had liked it, at least in the beginning. It’s been only in the last few years that the brothers at the monastery have finally gotten me to understand what really happened, and that I wasn’t responsible either for the inappropriate relationship with the priest or for my mother’s suicide.”