Sign up for the Slatest to get the most insightful analysis, criticism, and advice out there, delivered to your inbox daily.

When a 14-year-old girl in Boulder, Colorado, named Alana Chen started keeping secrets from her family, it was under the advice of her Catholic priest. Chen, a devoutly religious teenager, had always felt different from other girls: She had, from a young age, felt a calling to be a nun.

There was a problem with this. Chen also had realized that she was attracted to other girls. She sought advice from her priest, a controversial and firebrand traditionalist, and he gave her disastrous advice: She should not tell her family, who might encourage her toward sin by affirming her sexual orientation. Instead, for the next seven years, with the encouragement of the priest

See Full Page