This is a fairly quick read and very intriguing story.
Basically, the best NCAA women's basketball player played overseas for a year or two after graduating from Villanova. She was offered a new contract at $200,000/year in the early '90s (about $400,000 in today's money), but she turned it down to enter a monastery. Already, that's shocking. But it wasn't just any monastery. It was basically a solitary-confinement-for-life-monastery.
The monastery is the Monastery for the Poor Clares. They live extremely poor (sleep in straw mats, no shoes for most of the day) and believe that their suffering will somehow make their prayers answered more for others. But that's not even the hardest part. The hardest part is that they can have no in-person contact with others. This girl walked away from her loving parents and siblings knowing she wouldn't be able to do something as basic as hug any of them for 25 years. It's not been 25 years, so she was able to briefly see all of them.
On an individual level, she is a great person, in that she is giving up everything for her belief that it helps others. But on the macro level, what the fvck! How screwed up is religion?!
https://www.espn.com/womens-college...ketball-star-shelly-pennefather-made-deal-god
Basically, the best NCAA women's basketball player played overseas for a year or two after graduating from Villanova. She was offered a new contract at $200,000/year in the early '90s (about $400,000 in today's money), but she turned it down to enter a monastery. Already, that's shocking. But it wasn't just any monastery. It was basically a solitary-confinement-for-life-monastery.
The monastery is the Monastery for the Poor Clares. They live extremely poor (sleep in straw mats, no shoes for most of the day) and believe that their suffering will somehow make their prayers answered more for others. But that's not even the hardest part. The hardest part is that they can have no in-person contact with others. This girl walked away from her loving parents and siblings knowing she wouldn't be able to do something as basic as hug any of them for 25 years. It's not been 25 years, so she was able to briefly see all of them.
On an individual level, she is a great person, in that she is giving up everything for her belief that it helps others. But on the macro level, what the fvck! How screwed up is religion?!
https://www.espn.com/womens-college...ketball-star-shelly-pennefather-made-deal-god