Activist Sr. Maureen Turlish Dies

By Susan Mathews
Catholic 4 Change
July 20, 2018

https://catholics4change.com/2018/07/20/activist-sr-maureen-turlish-dies/

You’re a bold and brazen article. Back in the day, an Irish nun might shame a defiant student with this derogatory phrase. Today, I honor a nun with it. Sister Maureen Paul Turlish was a bold and brazen article for all the right reasons. The Sister of Notre de Namur was a rebel with a cause. She tirelessly advocated for victims of clergy sex abuse and the misled faithful.

Sr. Maureen died on July 18th in Cincinnati, Ohio.

In remembering her today, Kathy and I couldn’t help but laugh. Sr. Maureen was hilarious. Not what one expects when dealing with the horrific and tragic. Her humor was dark, honest and clever. It honored the victims. She was a pistol aimed at clericalism.

Sr. Maureen helped found the National Survivor Advocates Coalition and served on the board of directors for the Delaware Association for Children of Alcoholics and on the steering committee for Philadelphia’s Voice of the Faithful and Catholic WhistleBlowers.

CHANGING LAWS & LIVES

A member of the Diocese of Wilmington, Delaware, she spoke before the Senate and House Judiciary Committees in support of the 2007 Delaware Child Victims Law which removed all statutes of limitation covering the sexual abuse of children and provided a two-year civil window which remains open for previously time-barred cases. She wanted the same for Pennsylvanians and spoke in Harrisburg.

Her articles on the subject appeared in secular and religious publications and she spoke at national conferences. Sister Maureen was frequently interviewed on radio and tv.

Sr. Maureen leaves a legacy of changed lives, including my own. I know that C4C followers will carry on the fight to protect children and the Church.

Click to read her editorial on the Diocese of Altoona-Johnston. We are sure to learn more if/when the PA Grand Jury Report is released. “It’s time for diocese to put victims first,” The Tribune-Democrat, March 21, 2017

Death is nothing at all. I have only slipped away into the next room.

I am I, and you are you. Whatever we were to each other that we still are.

Call me by my old familiar name, speak to me in the easy way which you always used.

Put no difference in your tone, wear no forced air of solemnity or sorrow.

Laugh as we always laughed at the little jokes we enjoyed together.

Play, smile, think of me, pray for me.

Let my name be ever the household word that it always was,

let it be spoken without effect, without the trace of shadow on it.

Life means all that it ever meant. It is the same as it ever was; there is unbroken continuity.

Why should I be out of mind because I am out of sight?

I am waiting for you, for an interval, somewhere very near, just around the corner.

All is well.”