Twelve-year-old Katie spills out of the car, all 4-foot-7 of her, and walks to the side entrance of the imposing Cathedral of Mary Our Queen in north Baltimore.
She passes under the “Maria Immaculata” bas-relief sculpture, pulls open the 2-inch-thick door and walks up the marble steps to the sacristy, where she drapes herself in the altar-server cassock that pronounces her service to this Catholic church. And every time she does so, my wife and I must act on faith that our daughter won’t become the church’s latest victim.
I came of age in the Catholic milieu in Washington, D.